[Psychiatry of the physician J.C. Reil--a critical view]

Reil (1759-1813) was one of the doctors who developed psychiatry in Germany. He represented a materialist psychiatry with dialectical aspects. His concept, which was orientated mainly on therapy, is based on the assumption that mental disturbances can be healed. He proposed the establishment of psychiatric hospitals in order to eliminate the hospitalization of the sick in the same building as healthy and to permit the application of specific forms of treatment. The methods he used to heal mental disorders were partly repressive, but they also contained elements of psychotherapeutic treatment.